[HOE] Road Warriors

[Brett Dixon <balance@tubas.net>]

I had an interesting session last Sunday. I had been wanting to try out 
the vehicle rules, as my posse has 4 ground vehicles and an ultralight. 
  the ultralight was grounded at the moment, though, and one biker was 
unavailable for the game, so his character 'hung back providing 
rearguard services.'

Besides some grumbling about fuel costs for the ultralight (And I even 
allow some gliding based off a good flying roll when I'm pretty sure 
the RW MPG ratings are considered averages encompassing normal use[1]) 
we had a fun setup where the posse had two jeeps and a motorcycle 
facing off against a Cadillac with a turreted assault rifle and a van 
with a fighting position to hold the local leader of the Hell's 
Plumbers[2].

Did I mention that the posse had definite information that their 
Templar's sister was possibly in these vehicles?

My posse got a bit frustrated when the see that I'm rolling 5d12 for 
driving from the gang's professional drivers. The chase rules seem like 
a good concept, although I have a few questions summarized below... The 
posse was losing ground, but shots were being exchanged, and they never 
had to even worry about the junker with a big rail gun in the back of 
the caddie due to poor cards.

Feeling frustrated, they let the Doomsayer go off, and he dropped a 
nuke at range in front of the lead vehicle, the cadillac. Improvising 
wildly, we figured out what damage bracket each vehicle would be in and 
went from there. The enemy vhiecles weren't damaged too bady... The 
Nuke went off far enough away to reduce it to light damage, although 
the doomsayer got it up to a core 7d12 or so base damage! Both villian 
cars got a tire shredded, and the people in the ring-mount turret and 
the fighting position got trashed (except for the boss, who I was 
spending chips on...)

The posse's jeeps weren't too badly hurt. Cover helped a bit, keeping 
one shooter alive and the posse vehciles were only (only!) in 3d12 
land.  The one bike in the group got toasted, though... Lost a 
durability step, took a hit, and the driver was a bit scorched. Oh, and 
the bike's driver has the Flashbacks soldier hindrance, so he knows 
he's oly got a few rounds to be effective.

I'm working on how to handle the crashed rode as we continue through 
posse actions. A few shots are exchanged, but then the aforementioned 
soldier uses those nifty AP grenades on his rifle with difficult shots 
through windows into the van, and follows up with one into the caddie.

Chunkage follows. The mooks in each vehicle (Including the drivers!) 
are reduced to a thick red past. The templar's sister is seriously 
wounded. I burn through the stack of chips I've accumulated to keep the 
boss alive, and he even manages to jump from a vehicle moving 70 mph 
and come up fighting!

I handwave the situation... The now-driverless enemy vehicles crash and 
even rescue the sister (Oh, and there's the body of her mother in the 
van, too. Nasty situation, but it resolved a LOT of plot confusion in 
one fell swoop).

Anyway, the posse was successful, albeit in a very different way than I 
intended. The Soldier is going to leave the group... nearly killing the 
posse Templar's sister is not a good thing. But it was still a good 
session...


Anyway, on to some questions...

How is massive damaged handled for vehicles? because it gets the bonus 
of being an anti-vehicle weapon if it's close enough, I said it only 
did one hit, but I've reconsidered that since. Of course, since it 
would have potentially put some of the hero's vehicles out of 
commission even worse, it's no big deal.

In the Chase rule's do the vehicle movement phases apply, or are they 
rolled into the chase roll mechanic? If so, do drivers still lose their 
high card?

[1] I drive a Jeep, and RW's claimed 30 mpg isn't gonna happen anytime 
soon... 'Course, the jeep in RW is a 2070's model or better...)

[2] The name I solicited for input a few weeks ago worked fine... The 
posse felt that any gang with such a goofy name deserved to be taken 
out on general principle.